The Uncarved Blog

The Poet

There are no worlds but images
that can be put into words
never quite perfectly.

But close enough
close enough to keep the poet alive.

The poet stands on the corner
of the town square
greeting passers-by with haiku.

The same old words pieced together
somehow new
words in ways that no one ever heard before.

There are no images but feelings
that grasp for words
like a blind man seeing with fingertips.

The poet lives in the world of feeling
searching for loopholes
for a way to say just one perfect thing
and keep on living.

There are no feelings but unity
where words cannot survive
that intense pressure of perfection.

Unity—
there are no words
there are no images
there are no worlds.

No, not even this one.

The poet longs for unity
his moment of perfection
but cannot go there and still make poems.

He walks the edge of the canyon
one foot on earth
the other reaching out over the abyss
searching for solid air.

—Rolf Erickson
For Ken Chawkin
April 20, 2007

Also see The Poet by Ken Chawkin, and Mirror Lake by Rolf Erickson.

This entry was posted on February 26, 2010 at 10:14 am and is filed under Other poems, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.